


La Chasse au Loup

by Your_Iron_Lung



Category: Letterkenny (TV)
Genre: Black Comedy, Dark Comedy, Gen, I promise this is a comedy, ITS SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY PLEASE LAUGH, M/M, Not Beta Read, dont tell the trailer park boys, everyones unaware, fic is in english despite french title, it just kinda happens, samsquantches are involved, the tiniest briefest mention of gore, theyre all oblivious even tho its obvious, this is supposed to be funny but all i know how to write is drama and horror, wayne/daryl but its not the main focus, werewolf!Daryl
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28731342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Your_Iron_Lung/pseuds/Your_Iron_Lung
Summary: All things considered, there’s a lot of strange things a man could find in the back-bush of his own farm, rural as it may be. Some of it he could be aware of and do his best to work around, but a lot of it went so far under the radar it almost wasn’t worth thinking about. Mostly it was animals- a goat or a sheep that hadn’t been bedded down proper wandered out overnight and didn't wander back come morning. Turned up the next day in the bush in a strange, disemboweled sort of way.It's coyotes that do it, Wayne reasoned. Wolves, maybe, but whatever it was it certainly wasn't anything living under his very nose.
Relationships: Daryl/Wayne (Letterkenny)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 26





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> i shouldnt start a new ww fic while still working on a different one but this is supposed to be short and funny and ive been sitting on it for like a year and its practically all written out anyway and-
> 
> the other one is just really long and dramatic and sad and horrifying so 
> 
> yknow maybe i just needed a comedic break. but... with werewolves still 
> 
> im... not very good at funny things but i swear this is supposed to be a comedy. the first chapter is just maybe a lil dark but it picks up i swear i just cant help myself from being dark and broody lol
> 
> cw: blood and bones being kinda funky but nothing graphic

**THE STORM**

The storm that hit the farm was one that the local meteorologists had been nervously talking about for days, warning both farmers and locals alike to start taking serious precautions against it. ‘Make sure your delicate crops are appropriately cared for, and be sure your livestock have a proper, sturdy shelter to take cover in, because, folks, this is going to be a  _ bad  _ one.’ 

Spring storms often were. Wayne’s mother liked to put it in his head when he was younger that it was because the winter and summer seasons used springtime as a battleground of sorts, fighting it out like gods from some old mythos. Spring storms, as she put it, happened because winter was taking too long to leave and summer was quickly growing impatient. Their clashes turned violent fast, and that's how spring got a reputation for its disastrous weather.

If his mother were still alive today, he was sure that she’d say this storm was going to be a real battle for the ages. It was winding up to be one of the worst the area had had in awhile, aiming to hit Letterkenny in the dead of night when its people were at their most vulnerable.

_ Should probably just surrender there, bud _ , he sometimes found himself thinking whenever he heard new reports regarding the storm, each incoming update worse than the last.

Expect heavy gusts of wind and moderate to severe structural damage, quoted the forecasters. Hail was guaranteed, and it was going to bring plenty of thunder and lightning with it. The rainfall was expected to be heavy, so be wary of localized flooding. Isolated tornadoes would be a strong possibility- make sure there was a way to receive alerts if one should pop up. 

“With the way they’re talking, you’d think the sum’bitch was gonna be rainin’ fire and brimstone on us,” McMurray grumbled one day, and Wayne found that he agreed that they might be talking it up a little bit. He couldn’t remember a time when an unnamed storm warranted so much precaution.

Wayne’s thoughts on the impending weather notwithstanding, he understood how important the farm was to his livelihood; he and Katy depended on it to get by, so if there was any sort of threat to it that could be prevented, then it was only right that they ought to do something about it. Nothing worse than being caught with your pants down, so to speak.

With the enlisted help of Dan and Dary, they’d gone around reinforcing all the windows and barn doors, checking for any fundamental flaws in the integrity of their buildings while Katy went around making sure the crops that could be saved were secured before extending that same courtesy to Dan’s estate. It was hard work, and they were all bedraggled and worn out from all the extra hours that had to be put in on top of everything else they’d been dealing with as of late, but they all felt a little more secure from their efforts. 

(They’d paid special attention to fortifying The Garden as they’d worked on making sure the farm was secured; they couldn’t risk its contents being exposed, and if anyone asked  _ why  _ it warranted so much focus, well, they had to protect Dan’s perennials.)

By the time the storm finally rolled into town with its thick, voluminous black clouds slouching ominously towards Letterkenny to be born, Wayne again found himself mentally calling for its surrender. All his blustering with McMurray left him feeling slightly foolish as he stood out on the back deck of his small home to face the bastard’s approach, lightning already beginning to flare out of the clouds to illuminate itself against the backdrop of a rapidly darkening evening sky.

He wasn’t a man who’d ever really been affected much by storm anxiety, but as he stood there thinking about it, flicking his unfinished dart away, he reckoned he might be feeling it now.

(Although,  _ to be fair _ , his anxieties weren’t because of the storm itself, but rather, were in anticipation of the storm’s aftermath and what it might dredge up. Things had been oppressively ominous around the farm the past few months, and of course it was only suitable that a storm of  _ this  _ magnitude should serve as a catalyst; he just hadn’t yet figured out what it was a catalyst  _ to. _ )

His mind weighed down with his thoughts, Wayne turned his back on the stormfront and stepped inside as the first strong gust of wind surged past him, slamming the door shut after him with a loud bang. 

The suddenness of its closure made him flinch, and the uneasiness harbored in his chest squeezed tightly for an instant. Gus jerked up from where he’d been sleeping by the door and whined pitiably at the noise. Wayne crouched down as he stepped by him to pet his head reassuringly as the distant, Delicate Sound of Thunder announced the storms arrival.

“Oh, it’s alright,” Wayne muttered lowly in a babying tone before stepping away, ignoring the miserable way Gus plopped his head back onto the tile with his eyes turned nervously towards the door.

He peeked his head into the living room to check on Stormy before making his way upstairs, mentally going over the emergency plans he’d made with Katy and Daryl (who lived with them now for safety’s sake) in case the worst should happen: where their emergency supplies were stashed, which one of them was going to round up the dogs, and where they were all going to go if a tornado  _ should  _ whip up.

They were as well prepared as they could be. All that was left to do was sleep through it; there was choring that needed to be done in the morning, and a man needed his rested energy to do them efficiently, impending doom or no.

The door to the guest bedroom where Dary had been staying was uncharacteristically shut when he reached the upstairs landing. Wayne stopped by it and considered checking in on him, but decided against it before settling into his own room and getting ready for bed, where he laid sleepless for hours, listening to the storm as it came to town, bringing all its rage with it.

The wind outside wasn’t just howling as it blew past, but  _ screaming _ , screeching like a mateless fox in the night. Every thud and thunk of debris as it slammed against the house had him calculating the damages in his mind ( _ casualties of a seasonal war), _ leaving him to wonder if his barn would even still be standing by the morning.

But if not, then it could be rebuilt, the livestock replaced. It would be a financial hit, sure, but all the family animals were inside, and unless a tornado really did come bumbling through, then everything would be fine. Stock could be replaced; his family couldn’t, but they were all safe and accounted for. If he stayed awake worrying about it, then he’d be too tired to make any needed repairs by the time the storm finally did peter out.

He inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to ease his mind, and felt all the stored up tension he’d been holding slide out of his body. As he focused on the machine-gun rhythm of the heavy rain hammering down against the roof, he could almost tune out the screaming gale, and adjusted to the aggressive white noise as being something soothing.

Later, he wouldn’t remember falling asleep; it was only after he woke up that he’d realized he’d even slept at all. He woke up feeling disoriented, his phone pinging an alarm at him from where he’d set it down. Grabbing it, he checked the tornado watch alert and then set it back down, an anxious little curl forming in his stomach.

He sat in bed, alert and awake despite feeling as though he hadn’t gotten more than about an hour’s worth of sleep. Something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t just because the storm was still there and lingering, thrashing Letterkenny hard enough to provoke an early morning alert.

It was preternatural, the way it was lingering, hovering over his home as though it had some sort of vendetta against them.

A loud bang came sharply and abruptly, capturing wholly Wayne’s attention. He fixed his head in the direction it came from and heard muffled voices coming from somewhere downstairs. The howling wind rushing by his bedroom window masked the urgency with which they spoke, but all the same he was able to understand that something bad must have happened sometime in the night.

Had the barn collapsed? Was a funnel cloud forming? He hoped that whomever it was pounding their way hurriedly up the stairs wasn’t about to tell him someone he knew had been hurt.

The door to his room slammed open, banging against the wall. Katy stood there in the opening, breathing hard, her face shadowed by the darkness of his room. 

“ _ It’s  _ Dary,” she said urgently, panting. Her slender form, backlit by the hallway light, was visibly shaking.

He didn’t have to be told twice. Wayne sat up in bed quickly, shucking the blankets off of himself so fast that he flung them straight to the floor as he came to a stand. 

“What’s the fuss?” he asked as an eerie sound came drifting up the stairs behind her. She stared at him with dazed eyes before turning her head to the side to listen to it as it crept up from down the stairs, and before he could kindly ask  _ what the fuck is going on,  _ she turned around suddenly and left. 

He listened to her footsteps race down the hall and back down the stairs, utterly alarmed. Her panic was uncharacteristic and unnerving, spurring him into action as he heard another loud bang emanate from downstairs. He took long walking strides as he made his way after her, subconsciously coming to realize that the sound that had lured Katy away was of someone moaning. 

Katy’s voice, shrill, disappeared as someone ( _ Squirrely Dan _ , he realized belatedly once he was halfway down the stairs) furtively whispered to whomever it was that was making that awful, miserable moaning that it was going to be okay.

“You’re alright, Dar. I gots you, I gots you.”

Making it to the downstairs landing, barefoot and full of purpose, Wayne turned towards the kitchen where all the noises were being made and was stunned still by what he saw.

There was blood  _ everywhere _ . Splattered on the floor, on the furniture, and in the center of a small pool of it was Dan, cradling Dary’s limp, motionless body amidst the overturned dining chairs. Wayne’s mouth dropped open, his eyes blinking hard as he both tried to get over the shock of what he was seeing and processing it all in the same second.

Dan looked up at him when he stepped close, pale-faced and covered up to the elbows in runny blood, fresh and staining his denim overalls a dark, grotesque burgundy. All Wayne could do in that moment was stare, even as he realized that what was making that horrid noise was Dary.

Dary, who looked ridiculously small as Dan held him in his trembling arms. Dary, who was naked and coated in blood and viscera, looking more like a newborn than a man. Dary, whose eyes were open wide but rolled back and blind, exposing nothing but red-veined white as his mouth hung limply open, releasing that droning moan in one continuous breath.

One of his hands was clutching at Dan for support, and his legs-

“What the fuck,” Wayne choked out, because as he stared down at him, he could see that both of Dary’s legs were hideously broken. 

“I don’t knows,” Dan gasped, his bearded face wet with tears. “I don’t knows what’s happening.”

“Where’s Katy gone?”

But before Dan could even respond to him, her screams supplied the answer. 

“Gus!” He heard her screech, her voice pitching wildly as she screamed furtively into the wind. “ _ Gus _ !”

Though it was hard, Wayne managed to tear his eyes off of Dary to turn towards the backdoor, alarmed to see that it was hanging weakly off its hinges, rustling as easily as a leaf in the breeze, opening a portal into the horrific grey rain that came in to splash against the linoleum. A flash of lightning illuminated her briefly as she stood in the yard shouting, her hands cupped around her mouth as she screamed for Gus over the sharp crack of accompanying thunder. 

In the back of his mind, all Wayne could think of in that moment was of the tornado alert. All their precautions had been tossed aside, and if disaster struck now-

Well, it almost wasn’t worth thinking about.

Leaving Dan and Dary in the kitchen, he rushed out after her, striding into the snow and mud barefoot to grab her roughly by the arm, her hair whipping around in the harsh wind in long wet strands that struck at his face.

“Inside!” he bellowed, trying to pull her back towards the house. 

“Gus is out here!” she cried out hoarsely, pulling her arm out of his grip. “He’s out here, Wayne! He got out when Dary came in!  _ Gus! _ ” she continued to scream, heedless of the danger she was putting herself in.

Wayne’s heart sank as he both saw and felt the desperation in her voice. He looked around briefly, trying to discern if he could see any sign of where his beloved dog had gone, but it was impossible to see anything in the torrential downpour.

Freezing water flooded down his face in such strong streams that it was all but blinding, such that he had to squint hard to keep the rain from inhibiting him totally. He could barely see Katy between the hard pouring streaks of rain even though they were only standing a few feet apart. If Gus  _ was  _ out there, then he was lost.

“INSIDE,” he ordered again, even though it hurt him deeply to do so, but for as much as he loved that dog, he couldn’t risk losing her over him. Katy let out an exhausted sob, but let Wayne take her by the wrist and sternly guide her back to the safety of the house.

As they rushed up the steps and out of the rain that was slowly turning to hail, there came the sound of a frightened dog hiding from underneath the porch. Wayne had never felt such relief as he did as he saw Katy to safety before sprinting back down the wooden steps, nearly slipping in the slush as he did so. There was a spot of latticework that lined the back-porch that he’d been meaning to patch up that smaller, wild animals had been using for shelter, and as he rounded the corner to it, he found Gus there lying in a terrified heap.

Ignoring the cold and the muck and the mess he was making of himself, Wayne wasted no time dropping to his knees to grab Gus and roughly drag him out of his little cove of protection. He was shaking badly as Wayne effortlessly tucked him up into his arms, carrying him back into the house with his whimpers in his ear. He held Gus by the collar for a moment as he tried to situate the door back into place before releasing him, letting him bolt into the living room to shake himself dry and hide.

Soaking wet and breathing heavily, Wayne wiped the water off of his face and unknowingly streaked mud across his forehead before returning to Dan’s side, who still sat with Dary in his arms. Neither of them had moved from their position on the floor, but even as Wayne tried to re-fix his attention on what happened to Dary to see where all that blood was coming from, he noticed something that didn’t make any sense. 

When Wayne had looked him over before, his legs had been terribly broken in such a way that they'd looked almost digitigrade, the bones cracked at unnaturally sharp angles that seemed to strain against his skin, but now they looked like they were-

And even as he stared down at them, the noise Dary was making suddenly keened and Wayne was able to  _ see _ the bones in his legs shift, moving back towards what accounted for normal with a sickening crunch. 

“Wayne,” Dan whispered, terrified. “Wayne, I don’t knows what to do here.”

_ Well, that makes two of us, Squirrely Dan _ , he thought hysterically to himself.

“Just- fuckin’- I don’t- just- just take him upstairs,” Wayne barked, speaking too harshly in his confused panic. He honestly had no idea what to do; didn’t even fully understand yet what was even going on, but even as Dan flinched at the initial command, having some sort of direction seemed to solidify his resolution. His round face lost its helplessness in a quick second as he nodded resolutely at the order. Wayne helped him situate Dary’s unconscious, lax body into his arms before getting to it, tromping heavily up the stairs with dutiful purpose, handling the extra weight expertly and trailing blood behind them.

Wayne watched them go before turning his attention to Katy, who had picked up one of the overturned chairs and was now sitting at their table, her head in her hands. Her hair, stringy and loose from being in the rain hung in long, miserable strands, masking her face in a way that was reminiscent of a Japanese ghost.

“Where’s Stormy?” Wayne asked, throat clenching uncomfortably at the thought that she, like Gus, could’ve gotten loose and was out there in the storm somewhere. The sounds of the wind howling and threatening to blow the kitchen door down were more disturbing to him now.

“Locked in the bathroom,” Katy replied tersely, holding an unlit cigarette in her trembling hand.

“In the bathroom,” Wayne repeated with a frown, turning his head in the downstairs bathroom’s direction. The inside light was on, and from the slight crack under the door he could see the shadow of Stormy pacing anxiously by the entrance. “Well... what for?” 

“She attacked Dary when he came in.”

“What?” With so much to process, Wayne was struggling to understand this strange sequence of events, such as they were. “She attacked him? What was he doing out there?” 

“He wasn’t… he wasn’t  _ right  _ when he came in,” Katy said, her whole body shuddering at whatever memory she’d recalled. Before Wayne could ask her what she meant by that, exactly, she elaborated further, saying, “Wayne, it’s  _ him _ . The sasquatch, wendigo, fucking  _ thing. _ Killing all those animals. All those  _ people-  _ Wayne, it’s Dary. Daryl.”


	2. The Bite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The incident in which the bite occurred happened in the upcountry, roughly a year before the storm would sweep through Letterkenny. They’d been on a fishing trip in Quebec, where they were, as a group, no longer formally welcome after the altercation with Marie-Fred and friends. Welcome or not, though, there was great fishing up in Que-bec, and they’d all be damned if they weren’t going to take part in it once the lakes froze over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im gonna try and push out an update for this mmmm roughly once a week
> 
> should be... less than 10 chapters total overall, i think
> 
> cw for blood and an exposed knucklebone for this bit
> 
> (fuck if this aint still a little on the dark and broody side lol)

**THE BITE**

The incident in which the bite occurred happened in the upcountry, roughly a year before the storm would sweep through Letterkenny. They’d been on a fishing trip in Quebec, where they were, as a group, no longer formally welcome after the altercation with Marie-Fred and friends. Welcome or not, though, there was great fishing up in Que-bec, and they’d all be damned if they weren’t going to take part in it once the lakes froze over.

They’d spent the day in relative peace, catching fish and sharing crude jokes, and in the end, it wasn’t even the Blue-Plaids that ended up harassing them; some other group of degenerates decided to take issue with them fishing on ‘their’ turf and of  _ course  _ a fight broke out. 

It was pretty even from a numbers standpoint, and they’d been handling things fairly well up until the point where one of them bit Dary. 

He’d had a man held in a tight grapple, arm wound around the man’s neck tight enough to hold him still while he gave him the business when the degenerate had had the bright idea to open his mouth and clamp down on Dary’s hand when it next made contact with his face. It would have been fine, maybe, if he hadn’t drawn blood. Dary would’ve let him go, taken a hit, and then kept going, probably, but the man held his hand clenched tightly between the sharp edges of his teeth like a tick stuck on a deer’s ass and refused to let go.

“Foul! Foul play!” Dan had roared angrily when Dary started hollering. The biter seemed determined to at least take a finger off as Dan tried to separate them, clamping his teeth down hard over Dary’s knuckles and locking his jaw, but even with Dan’s intervention he wouldn’t let go until Wayne came over and hit him so hard he fell back into the snow unconscious, Dary’s blood staining his teeth and dribbling down over his chin in a grotesque display. 

The fight ended pretty quickly after that. Wayne’s fury was unmatched as he wreaked hell upon the rest of them until they’d all tucked in their tails, grabbed up their unconscious accomplice and hauled ass out of there. All focus switched to Dary then as he tenderly cradled his hand against himself, his face a contorted mixture of pain and bewilderment as their collective adrenaline wore out.

“Still got all your digits there, Dar?” Katy’d asked quietly, unsure if she even wanted to know the answer. She’d looked pale and disturbed, face almost as white as the backdrop of snow.

“Think so, fuck, but it hurts,” Dary had hissed, holding his hand up for them all to see that one of his knuckle bones was fully exposed, a large chunk of his skin gone down the throat of his assailant. Despite his efforts to appear calm, his hand had trembled as he held it up. “Take a look?”

Katy turned away from the gruesome sight while Dan fumed beside him.

“Oughta find ‘em. Take down their names, that’s what we oughta do.” He was so angry he’d been vibrating with outrage. “Biting another mans like that! Fuckin’ upcountry degens, raised by wolves, I swears. Oughta go after ‘em!”

They hadn’t, though; instead, they’d all stood by idly as Wayne aggressively shrugged out of his snow parka to tear a sleeve off his plaid, pulling it off gruffly at the seam with one strong yank. No one said anything as he wrapped Dary’s hand tightly with it and gathered all their things before piling everyone into the truck to head back home.

They’d managed to make it to the clinic before Dary took a turn, peeling back the shirt sleeve in the exam room to reveal the angry red streaks that were leading up and away from the bite wound, following his veins as they raced up his arm to the lymph nodes in his pit. He’d turned pale and passed out the very next second, and then it was from the clinic to the ER to try to stop whatever virus he’d contracted from spreading, and from there to the ICU when they were unsuccessful in stopping the spread, and there the infection began to wreak its havoc in full.

The fever lasted days. Wayne could clearly remember how they had Dary laid out in that hospital bed just sweating, near comatose, all the liquids being pumped into him for hydration purposes resurfacing on his skin in a sickening sheen. The doctors tested for every disease transmittable via human saliva, from the hepatitis’ to rabies to even syphilis, but every test they ran came back negative. They couldn’t decide whether to treat him for sepsis or cellulitis; had no idea how to effectively treat him at  _ all  _ besides giving him a cocktail of antibiotics in the desperate hope that  _ something  _ would work and patching up the wound.

They told Wayne and Katy to prepare for the worst- that total organ failure seemed likely if the fever spiked any higher and that he ought to be transferred to another, more prestigious hospital where they might be able to save him because this fever wasn’t something they could wait for him to just sweat out. His life was at serious risk, they explained, and if the doctors at the other hospital couldn’t figure it out, well. Wayne interrupted them by saying they best not start thinking things like that when there was more to be done, and one day before Dary was set to be transferred, the fever inexplicably broke. 

He’d woken up complaining about how he looked like a Sally as he wore nothing but a hospital gown. The only question he had related to when he could get back to work, as though he hadn’t just been laying on his purported death bed for the past week suffering from a mysterious and unknown infection. Katy had cried with relief; Dan too. Wayne had felt close, but had always known in the back of his mind that Dary would pull through. He just hadn’t been able to imagine life without him.

Initially after his miraculous recovery, the doctors hadn’t wanted to let him go. There were too many unknowns surrounding his hospitalization: they ought to send him to the CDC, his recovery was too circumspect, etc., but in the end they didn’t have the legal grounds to keep him any longer. All inconclusive tests continued to show up negative, and given that he didn’t  _ seem  _ contagious and wasn’t exhibiting any more life-threatening symptoms, they let him go. They talked and discussed things with Dary (under Wayne’s command) to try and sell them a reason for what could have happened, and eventually came to reason that it must just have been some sort of prolonged kind of allergic reaction, like something akin to mast cell disease. They’d given him an estimate on when his hand would heal and referred him to an allergist and that was that.

Or rather, it should’ve been. It took a while for Dary’s hand to regain full functionality, but once it had, things had been normal, for a time. 

Until they started finding things out in the bush.


	3. The Bush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’ya reckon’s done that, Wayne?” he asked, and he was either nervous or tired or an uneasy combination of both, because there was a tightness to Dary’s voice that cut into his nonchalance and managed to get Wayne to spare him a quick look of contemplation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hullabaloo and howdy-do

**THE BUSH**

All things considered, there were a lot of strange things a man could find in the back-bush of his own farm, rural as it may be. Some of it he could be aware of and do his best to work around, but a lot of it went so far under the radar it almost wasn’t worth thinking about. (The incident with finding the cannabis plants first came to mind whenever Wayne had the hindsight to think back on it).

Mostly it was animals- a goat or a sheep that hadn’t been bedded down proper wandered out overnight and didn't wander back come morning. Turned up the next day in the back-bush in a strange, disemboweled sort of way, with its limbs all askew and guts just hanging out in the brush like they were only meant to take in the sun for a quick minute before coming back to the barn.

It's coyotes that did it, Wayne reasoned. Wolves, maybe, taking advantage of Dary’s own incompetence for forgetting to lock the livestock in at night. Forgetful as Dary was (or wasn’t; he was always quick to insist that he _did_ bed them down and locked them in proper whenever they found one out there, but if that were true, how’d they wind up dead out in the bush then, eh, big shoots?), that’s why it eventually became so important to grab a chair, a rifle, a best bud and go out there to thin down the local population a bit to discourage that kind of gore from turning up. It was nice to be outdoors, and nicer still to earn $65 a coyote tail, but even so, sometimes things turned up in the back-bush in that strange, disemboweled sort of way that didn’t always look like it _could_ be the work of a coyote or wolf.

Like that one time they found a human hand out there, lying casually in the shade of a wild blackberry bush like whoever it’d been attached to had simply been caught berry-picking and left it behind in a hurry. Uncleanly severed at the wrist, its pale fingertips were stained purple from blood loss and berry residue and unfortunately had to be wrested from Stormy’s strong jaw before she could run off with it. 

They hadn’t found the rest of whoever the hand had belonged to, but the hand alone was enough to leave a bad taste in Wayne’s mouth, though it was one he didn’t have to swallow if he didn’t pay too much attention to it. And anyway, if the authorities they’d called in to deal with it weren’t worried about it, then Wayne didn’t see much of a reason to fret over it either.

“We’ll get to the bottom if it,” they’d assured him, but they never got back to him on whether or not they ever did.

So, all things considered, Wayne knew firsthand about the strange things a man could find in the back-bush of his own farm, but it still took him by surprise when he and Dary stumbled upon the latest oddity his land had to offer.

A moose- specifically, a big old bull, lying dead on its side in the snow with one antler broken roughly in half and its guts torn viciously away from its stomach like something hadn’t just been trying to find a meal, but had been trying to dig its way _in_ . They both stared at the carnage in repressed awe, because the only thing dumb enough to try and take down a _full grown bull moose_ was likely a Canada goose, and even though those beautiful fowl were tougher than nails with teeth on their tongues, there was no way in hell a Canada goose was capable of taking down anything bigger than a Gus-sized dog when it came right down to it.

The corpse alone was intimidating. The sheer, archaic _size_ of it. The fact that one of its antlers lied half-buried in the snow, fractured in half and splintered, indicated that whatever killed it had power. Strength to not just kill it, but to maim it viciously in the process. As he came to understand this, Wayne subconsciously gripped the butt of his rifle just a little bit tighter.

Beside him, Dary turned his head to spit, but he didn’t take his eyes off the ruination of that great big moose.

“What’ya reckon’s done that, Wayne?” he asked, and he was either nervous or tired or an uneasy combination of both, because there was a tightness to Dary’s voice that cut into his nonchalance and managed to get Wayne to spare him a quick look of contemplation.

He wanted to say coyote, maybe, or a wolf, more than likely, but he knew well enough that it couldn’t have been either of those things, and knew that Dary knew that, too. Creatures like that were too small, and who’d ever heard of a _coyote_ getting after a moose? Not savage enough, even on the off chance they’d gone rabid and the moose was sick or something. They didn’t have claws nearly big enough to shred open the side of a moose like that anyway, because whatever tore into it had hollowed it out almost completely.

 _A bear then_ , he reasoned to himself, although given that it was the dead of winter and any bear capable of disemboweling a moose was probably tucked away in its den, sleeping the cold away, hardly bothered enough to decimate a moose. _A moose._

Coyote, wolf, or bear, though- all three would’ve eaten more than just its guts, which were left in long, wet tendrils strewn across the snow like big pink worms.

“Dunno, Dar,” he eventually said slowly. He stood there looking puzzled, because there weren’t any tracks in the thick snow for him to make a fair assessment of what could’ve happened, but he tried not to let it show too much. “But if it starts comin’ round near the house, it’ll be trouble.”

Dary grunted in affirmation and hocked another spit, pulling the phlegm into his throat with a gross wet sound. He licked his lips afterwards. He couldn’t take his eyes off the corpse.

“Better find it before it gets there, then,” he said after a long moment.

“That’s the biggest Texas sized 10-4 I ever heard, good buddy.”

Even so, they stood there silently, contemplating the dead moose for a long minute before hoisting up their rifles to bravely spend the day prowling about in the bush searching, tracking, dreading running into whatever butchered the moose. In the end, though, they couldn’t find even a small trace of it, whatever it was.

No prints to follow, no blood-trail towards a den; nothing. The snow around the moose had been too disturbed by whatever it’d been fighting to retain any helpful information, and they were left with nothing but the knowledge of a threat.

After the sun began to set, they crept slowly back to the farmhouse, unnerved, retreating from the darkness before they started taking potshots at shadows that started to look a little too wrong the longer they stayed out there.

They buried the corpse the morning after Wayne reported it to wildlife. It required the use of tractors and other rented machinery to get it into the earth, but once it was gone, they all felt better for it.

Except Wayne. For a man who mostly lived inside the confines of his own mind, out of sight, out of mind never really did apply to him like it did others.

The incident with the moose left him troubled and wondering. The mere suggestion that _something_ large and violent enough to kill a moose was running amok on _his_ property was both equal parts infuriating and terrifying.

It could get one of the dogs, if they weren’t careful. It’d already been at the sheep; why would it stop there? He resolutely did not think of Dary, alone in his trailer on the outskirts of the property and what might happen if it started sniffing around there.

Though, that was _if_ it continued to hang around, which, of course it did. In the months that followed, more unexplainable gore turned up around the property, but nothing as shocking as the moose. It was small things, mostly: bloodied strips of matted fur, dismembered pieces of animals (both farm-raised and wild). The corpses that began to litter the farm, coupled with the broken sections of fencing that turned up every so often were strong enough evidence to let them all know that it was still out there and still, clearly, a problem. As if to spite him, Gus and Stormy began bringing the remains of things they found out in the fields home to him, laying them out on the back porch and staining the wood dark with blood and rot and reminding him, constantly, that he couldn’t _find_ the damn thing. 

It worried him that there was something so unknown out there. He wasn’t used to having problems he couldn’t outright deal with, but no one who knew anything about what was going on at the farm could make heads or tails of it. If it was a degen he could fight them and get them to fuck off with his fists, but as it was, they couldn’t even figure out _what_ it was they were dealing with.

Just something strange, out there in the bush.

 _We’ll get to the bottom of it,_ the authorities had assured him.

But had they? Had the authorities actually done anything at all?

With the rash of recent animal deaths around the farm, they started to keep the dogs inside at night, and some of Katy’s favourite barn cats, too.

As troubling as it all was, though, it wasn’t like they found something out there every day, or even every week (aside from what the dogs sniffed out and brought home); for the most part, the back-bush remained barren. Empty, except for the occasional degen or worm-picker they have to chase off the property for fear of finding their bodies out there one day.

There were long periods of days where livestock went untouched. Sometimes, even weeks passed where no wildlife turned up in that strange, disemboweled sort of way they’d all started to get used to, and life progressed at its usual, slow, small-town pace, until a month or so later when it all began happening again. Something strange. Something disemboweled. Something that, again, left no trace of ever having been there at all, except for the ruined corpse it often left behind that had them all scratching their heads in its wake.

_We’ll get to the bottom of it._

Staring down at the bloodied remains of not one, not two, but _three_ maimed coyotes, two of them dead, one still barely hanging on, breathing hard and whimpering for mercy, Wayne felt his frustrations reach a peak. All three of the coyotes have been practically torn to pieces, yes, _pieces_ , and the words of that first initial assurance begin to repeat themselves in his head:

_Don’t trouble yourself over it, Wayne. We’ll get to the bottom of it._

“Fuck’s sake,” he muttered, and turned away to squint off into the horizon, squaring his jaw as he internalized his frustrations in order to pretend he couldn’t hear the agonized whines of that poor coyote.

“Wayne, buddy, I hate to say it, but I think you might have a real problem on your hands here.” Dary’s face was drawn tight and pinched with exhaustion. He’d grown jaded to it; they all had, but even so he looked miserably tired. Drained in a way that suggested he’d had a rough night out at the ‘rippers or something.

The rough, unshaven scruff of a wiry beard around his jaw had Wayne do a double take, wondering when Dary’s facial hair had taken to forming anything but sporadic, unformed pre-pubescent patches.

“Well, you don’t fuckin’ say,” Wayne responded tersely as he unstrapped the gun from his shoulder. He lined up the rifle to the head of the injured coyote and held it there unwaveringly until it died on its own with one long exhalation.

Dary didn’t make any further comments. He scratched the fuzz lining his face unaware and followed Wayne around for the rest of the day as they made arrangements to bury the coyotes, sectioning off yet another piece of land that was quickly growing full of animal corpses.

And then, normalcy. Farming. Spending the evenings at MoDeans, as though a few rounds of Puppers would save them from their problem. Rumors grew about the goings on at the farm; (‘Bad gas travels fast in a small town’, someone’s always saying), despite their efforts to quell them. They hadn’t been keeping the animal carnage that had been taking place a secret, not exactly, but once enough people started hearing about it, word began spreading that maybe one of the dogs he reared had gone full Cujo, causing the produce stand’s success to take a hard financial hit, and Wayne’s frustrations only ever grew.

After the failing return to normalcy, a body.

Except, it wasn’t an animal this time.

“Jesus Christ,” Dary said, in a panicked way that meant, ‘Oh fuck buddy, we’ve stumbled onto something really terrible here’. He turned around and immediately threw up, and the sound of Dary’s sickness paired with what he was looking at was enough to make Wayne’s stomach start to turn sour too.

It was a person- a _whole_ person; not just a hand this time. Unrecognizable, but dead and disemboweled all the same.

“Oh fuck, Wayne.” Dary choked out his name like a whimper as he wiped the spit off his chin, turning back to face the body, his eyes wide as he tried to identify it. “Is that- is that one of the _skids_?”

 _It was bound to happen_ , Wayne thought idly to himself amidst Dary’s panic. The only thing left to discover out there short of another fucked up moose was a fucked up man, but even so it was shocking.

There were whole chunks missing; huge bites torn out of this man’s body that were much too large to fit into the mouth of a wolf or coyote, or even a bear. Wayne stared down at the corpse and remembered the words of the police the last time they’d been around: _we’ll get to the bottom of it._

Well, they hadn’t. They hadn’t done fuck-all, from the looks of it.

“Pick your jaw up off the floor, Dary, there’s work to be done here,” he said icily, trying to channel a firmer constitution before turning away from the body with a concise, jerky movement. Anger, fear, and disgust bitterly powered through his veins, because when it came right down to it, the authorities _hadn’t_ gotten to the bottom of anything.

 _They_ hadn’t, but _he_ would.

With Daryl in tow, Wayne stalked back to the farmhouse with dark purpose, a plan of action already beginning to take form in his mind as they stepped into the wide opening of the barn.

“I won’t ask you to be my accomplice in this,” he said as he stood amidst the hay and a tractor, looking around briefly before taking hold of a shovel. He looked at Daryl, who was pale and clearly frightened, but seemed to already know what edict Wayne was about to lay out. “Now, I’m going to bury this man, and if you think I oughta do somethin’ different about it, well, then you’d better fuck off now. You can report me to the authorities if you like, but I think by now you and I know that nothing’s going to get accomplished that way.

“Whatever’s going on here requires more attention then they can spare, and if we don’t figure something out it’s only going to get worse.” Mental images of his dogs and friends and Katy lying out there dead and mauled rose to the forefront of his mind. “I don’t know what the fuck’s out there, but I’m willing to find out and could use the help, if you’d be so willing to lend it.”

Dary eyed the shovel in Wayne’s hand nervously, the implications of what he was saying mulling around in his mind uneasily until a stoic form of clarity stole over his face. His eyes hardened with resolve as he grabbed hold of a pickaxe lying up against the barn wall. “You know, I’d likely follow you into Hell if you asked me to,” Dary said with grim contemplation, feeling the weight of the pickaxe’s handle in his hands, his injury no longer plaguing him as it once did.

Wayne thought he did know, but felt it would’ve been too soft to say so.

_Well, that’s why I asked._

“Some things are better left unsaid, good buddy,” he replied instead. He felt both relieved and full of divine purpose all at once as he gripped the wooden shovel’s handle tightly. “I’ll tell Katy after the fact so she won’t be held accountable to anything, if we get found out. Dan too, I think. Fuck, with all the bodies around here maybe we’ll let him start a garden; might take well with all the natural fertilizer and such.”

“Sounds like you’re gearing us up to be like Scooby-Doo and the Blues Clues gang here,” Dary said with a crooked, inappropriate grin.

“Those are two different things, Dar,” Wayne said sullenly before turning his steely gaze back out towards the bush, where something strange and disemboweled lay waiting to be put to rest. “But I’ll let it slide if I get to be Fred.”

“Ain’t no one else among us with a big enough neck to fill out that kerchief, super chief.”

**Author's Note:**

> pls leave a comment! i love those things


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